Posts by: Scott Schrantz
Boot From VHD: Change the target VHD
There is a whole tutorial that could be written about booting from a VHD in Windows 7 and Windows 2008 R2. This is not that tutorial, and I am probably not the one to write it. But I did want to make a note of this because I know that I’ll forget it the next time I need it. To change the VHD that you’re booting from, you just have to make a couple of changes to the BCD. Boot from a Windows PE disc or a Windows 7 disc in System Recovery, and get to a command prompt. Then
Group Policy Preferences
Group Policy preferences is something new in Windows Server 2008. It used to be that adding group policies for things like mapped drives, printers, and Control Panel settings was a pain, and you had to drill down several nested layers all over the place to change anything. But with Group Policy preferences, all these common settings are now lumped together in one place, easy to change. It’s a really handy way to easily do what used to be a lot harder. The problem is, these settings only get applied in Windows 7. Anything older, even Vista, will just ignore them
Event ID 27
I was getting Event ID 27 on a server. The error read: Time Provider NtpClient: The response received from domain controller <host dns name> is missing the signature. The response may have been tampered with and will be ignored. This sounds likes a scary message, with warnings that the response has been tampered with, but like many messages it just means that there was some glitch and the servers aren’t syncing correctly anymore. I found the solution at EventID.net, and it’s pretty simple. Just open a command prompt and run this command: w32tm /resync /rediscover After that the time synced
Security Center Could Not Change Your Automatic Updates Settings
After removing a virus from a Windows XP computer, I got this message when I tried to turn on Automatic Updates: “Security Center could not change your Automatic Updates settings.” Viruses usually leave their little hooks behind after you uninstall them, disabling the tools that you need to fight them. So thanks to this page and this page, I found out how to turn Automatic Updates back on after the computer was clean of any more viruses. It’s all about registering some DLLs that got unregistered. Click Start, select Run and type: regsvr32 wuapi.dll regsvr32 wuaueng.dll regsvr32 atl.dll regsvr32 wucltui.dll
AVG Install/Uninstall Error
Over the past year I’ve been uninstalling AVG and replacing it with Microsoft Security Essentials. Free antivirus is always a shifting topic; it seems like they all stop the same viruses, and they all let the same ones get through (hello, FakeAntivirus scam program, is there anyone who can stop you from installing)? But I’ve settled for now on MSE; I like that it’s lightweight and the interface doesn’t get in your face or try to get you to upgrade. As I’ve been uninstalling AVG, though, I’ve been running into the bug where an error pops up during the uninstall.
Fatal Error C0000034 in Windows 7
This week Windows 7 Service Park 1 started being pushed out on Automatic Updates. On one hand, I think this is a good thing, because it forces people to update who otherwise never might. On the other hand, I’ve been getting a lot of call from folks this week who are inconvenienced by the update, just because it takes so long to install it. There’s the initial install, then you reboot, and then it goes through a whole secondary install that can take 15 minutes or half an hour. And these are people who have come into the office in
